Raise them poor

            Growing up in a small rural area on a farm was amazing, the best.  I was only within walking or bike riding distance to 1 friend, and as girls do, we often grew sick of each other very quickly so I entertained myself by playing with kittens, or riding horses, or fostering my ever-growing imagination by wandering around in the woods escaping poachers and snipers with my dog Ed or building forts inside the hay stacks in the barn. I was what some may call a bit of a tomboy, but I was blissfully unaware of this, along with many other things. My life as a child was absolutely perfect. I had no idea that my parents lived paycheck to paycheck and struggled to pay the bills, or that we grew a garden because we needed the extra food, or raised cattle to put in our freezer, I actually just thought my parents  were tightwads, but I was happy nonetheless. Always a wonderful home-cooked, never from a box meal that never failed to include meat, vegetables, and rice or potatoes, real potatoes that my mom actually mashed herself…that doesn’t happen very often these days!  It was something special to go to McDonalds, we simply didn’t have extra money for that most of the time. We never had cable or satellite tv, but who needed that when you could play outside until dark?

            Kids today have cell phones at age 10, tvs in their bedrooms, and internet access at their fingertips. They are in afterschool activities daily and have little time to even build 10% of the imagination that I once had. Girls wear makeup and highlight their hair at age 12, and have sex at 13. Boys are no longer shy at the school dances, that now often begin in elementary school, and the days of boys on one wall and girls on another are fading. I almost feel that I was naïve at this age, but thinking back…I was not alone in my innocence. These things were rare. It was exciting to sit next to a boy at lunch, and talked about for weeks if hands were held. This is nothing these days, so many youth laugh at the innocence that they should have and that has been robbed from them. I realize that parents have the money to provide their children with new technology, and it’s hard not to in today’s world, but there are consequences.

            What exactly are we giving our kids with all of this technology, daily activities, and freedom? We’re giving them adulthood. They are little adults with immature minds…and this is scary. I miss my childhood, I miss running around on the farm and inviting my friends over to ride horses through the woods. I want this for my children, but it’s harder now. We’re busier now. We have more money now. My parents always believed that without being handed everything, and teaching kids that the money mom and dad earn is for mom and dad…we would have to work for everything we wanted, we would grow up as self-sufficient adults who understood how to be conservative with our own money.  I’m quite sure that my parents could have been millionaires and I would have never known, I still would have had to feed my horses, cats, goats, and pigs every day to earn my keep! I think my dad has hit the nail on the head with his parenting philosophy…”Raise them poor.”